HE statues that
gave the best representation of Alexander's person, were those of Lysippus,
(by whom alone he would suffer his image to be made,) those peculiarities
which many of his successors afterwards and his friends used to affect to
imitate, the inclination of his head a little on one side towards his left
shoulder, and his melting eye, having been expressed by this artist with great
exactness. But Apelles, who drew him with thunderbolts in his hand, made his
complexion browner and darker than it was naturally; for he was fair and of a
light color, passing into ruddiness in his face and upon his breast.
Aristoxenus in his Memoirs tells us that a most agreeable odor exhaled from
his skin, and that his breath and body all over was so fragrant as to perfume
the clothes which he wore next him; the cause of which might probably be the
hot and adjust temperament of his body. For sweet smells, Theophrastus
conceives, are produced by the concoction of moist humors by heat, which is
the reason that those parts of the world which are driest and most burnt up,
afford spices of the best kind, and in the greatest quantity; for the heat of
the sun exhausts all the superfluous moisture which lies in the surface of
bodies, ready to generate putrefaction. And this hot constitution, it may be,
rendered Alexander so addicted to drinking, and so choleric.

His temperance,
as to the pleasures of the body, was apparent in him in his very childhood, as
he was with much difficulty incited to them, and always used them with great
moderation; though in other things he was extremely eager and vehement, and in
his love of glory, and the pursuit of it, he showed a solidity of high spirit
and magnanimity far above his age. For he neither sought nor valued it upon
every occasion, as his father Philip did, (who affected to show his eloquence
almost to a degree of pedantry, and took care to have the victories of his
racing chariots at the Olympic games engraved on his coin,) but when he was
asked by some about him, whether he would run a race in the Olympic games, as
he was very swift-footed, he answered, he would, if he might have kings to run
with him.